Nigeria: Boko Haram leader killed in airstrike

Nigeria’s military says it believes an air strike has fatally wounded Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau and other commanders of the homegrown al-Qaeda-linked movement.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau is believed to have been fatally wounded in an airstrike while he was praying in a forest stronghold in northeast Nigeria, the military said Tuesday.

The statement does not say how the military got the information but it identifies other commanders as “confirmed dead.”

Nigerian security forces have in the past declared that they have killed or fatally wounded Shekau, only to have him resurface in video and audio recordings. The military has said in the past that the al-Qaeda-linked Boko Haram was using look-alike fighters to impersonate the supposedly dead leader.

The strikes came in “the most unprecedented and spectacular air raid” carried out by the Nigerian Air Force while Shekau was praying on Friday, Islam’s sabbath day, at Taye village in the extremists’ Sambisa Forest holdout in northeast Nigeria, according to the statement signed by army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman.
“Those Boko Haram terrorist commanders confirmed dead include Abubakar Mubi, Malam Nuhu and Malam Hamman, amongst others. While their leader, so-called ‘Abubakar Shekau’, is believed to be fatally. Several other terrorists were also wounded,” he said.

Shekau started the uprising in 2009 that has killed 20,000 people, driven more than 2.2 million from their homes, and spread across Nigeria’s borders. It has been marked by deadly attacks and suicide bombings at schools, mosques and marketplaces and mass abductions including nearly 300 schoolgirls taken from a remote school in northeastern Chibok town. Dozens escaped but 218 remain missing.

Boko Haram – which means “Western education is forbidden – resurfaced as a deadly and merciless force under Shekau, who took over after a military raid on the group’s compound in Maiduguri, the biggest city in the northeast.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press